Instagram metric descriptions
When you connect your Instagram account, 30 days of post data will be backfilled. We are only able to start collecting stories data from when your Instagram account is connected. The table below provides a description of each metric that appears within Buffer's analytics. All metrics are pulled from Instagram's Graph API.
📝 Notes
- Seeing conflicting information? Checkout the article: Why your data in Buffer might differ from your native analytics
- For Instagram Reels, we are only able to pull in impressions, the number of likes, and the number of comments due to limitations with Instagram's API. We are not able to pull in other Reels metrics at this time.
| Posts | The number of posts sent. |
| Stories | The number of stories shared. |
| Reach | The number of unique people who saw your posts or stories. |
| Impressions | The number of times people saw your posts or stories. This number will always be higher than Reach because some people will see your posts multiple times. |
| Engagement | The number of likes, comments and post saves. |
| Engagement Rate | The percentage of impressions that resulted in an engagement (total number of comments, clicks, shares and reactions divided by the number of impressions). This is organic data only (organic clicks and organic impressions). Paid metrics are not included. |
| Likes | The number of likes your posts received. |
| Comments | The number of comments on your posts. |
| Post Saves | The number of times your posts were saved. You can access the "Save" information by clicking on the post image under Posts > Post Insights. Save info doesn't show up in reports. |
| Replies | The number of replies to your stories. If you are a customer in the EEA (European Economic Area) any Instagram stories you create will now see zero replies, even if those replies are from users outside of the EEA. If you are outside of the EEA, your stories will see a number of replies but it will exclude any replies from users in the EEA. This is due to new privacy rules in Europe that directly affect what Facebook and Instagram can show. Learn more from Facebook here. |
| Exits | The number of exits on your stories. "Exits" include anytime someone swipes left (not tapping back or forward) to move to another person's story, swipes down to go back to the main feed, or closes the story with "X" or by closing Instagram. |
| Completion Rate | The number of people who view your entire story. This is calculated as 1 - (exits / impressions). |
| New Followers | The number of followers you gained or lost. |
| Total Followers | Your total number of followers. |